Council Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Mike? The hot mics? Yes. They're all Zoom. Okay. Good afternoon. Good evening, everybody. Today is Wednesday, 01/22/2025. It is 05:31PM. This is the public the council public safety committee. I like to call the meeting to order and I like to call this meeting that like, call this meeting oh, there you go. Like, call this meeting to order. And I don't know who will do the role. Is it I think it's

That's Nagus. Yeah.

I think

it's Nagus. Yeah. Okay. That's what I'm told. Council member Roche? Here. And council member Bonilla junior?

Council member Bonilla is not here tonight. He is in Sacramento with the League of California Cities. Council council members Training. Training.

Mayor Sweeney?

I am here.

Thank you.

Moving on to public comments. This is reserved for anybody in the audience or online that would like to make a public comment on something on the agenda or not on the agenda. Is there anybody online? No. And there is nobody here in the room, so I'd like to close the public comments and move on to the approval of minutes.

I will move the minutes.

Moved by council member or mayor Brookdale Roach, Second box there, Salinas. And if there are no objections, it will unanimously pass. We we do have quorum. Right? We have form two of brick death. It feels

Feels corrupt. It feels like warm.

Yeah. Okay. Moving on to, reports and action items. This is a oral report only. This is the fire chief's report, and I I know we have chief over here and chief and deputy chief Hamrin. And I don't know who's gonna kick this off, but And I I saw I know he's not in the room, but is chief Matthews online? Well, he is online.

Right. Why it keeps disappearing?

I think they're they're trying to make sure it's protecting for any activities. Okay. She's glad he's being upset. Very

good. Thank you, everybody. Good evening. And for my achievement board, we'll start off by what you usually do with just kind of an idea of snapshot of the calls that the fire department ran over the fifty one day period that we're reporting on 2,529 total runs. 83% of those were EMS, and 15% were fire related calls. So and then below, you can see the number of runs that each individual station ran. I cannot see them from here, but it's just

order Ask for the blowout. Just

for information. And I'll talk a little bit about runs for Station one here in just a second. Any questions on those? Alright. Next slide, please. So a couple things to talk about. I will try to keep it fairly brief, but we were very excited to put into service a brand new company that is three one staffed apparatus, three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four seven. So thank you to that. We definitely need additional staffing. It just it helps with the call line that we have.

The final plan for this new company is when we take delivery of our new aerial truck ladder truck that will be positioned at Station 6. The crew is going to end up there, and they will be cross staffing a rescue rig that we have purchased, and that will be coming. And that's actually gonna be showing up before the truck. So what we decided to do is we looked at engine one, had run last year 4,538 calls. They're very busy, and it is while none of them will complain, I guarantee you that it it's taken a little bit of a toll.

So what we decided to do is since the engine company was coming or the company was coming into place on January 1, we thought we would try out putting an engine company there at Station 1 and give them a little bit of relief, put that new company in service, and it is working out really well. So thank you for that. The plan is, I believe what is it? March that the rescue is coming

that we thought? March and June? According to Seagrave. Yes.

Yeah. So I think I reported on this earlier. Seagrave and and all apparatus manufacturers are running into big time delays. So everything is on back order. We're expecting the rescue rig to come in, take delivery of that in March, and hopefully have it in service within a month after that. Once that happens, the crews that are stationed at Station 1 on Engine 11 will move over and get that rescue rig in service. They'll move into Station 6. And then when the truck gets there, they'll already be in place to get that truck ready ready to go, and they'll move on to that. And then we'll have them in their final home. So that's that.

Academy twenty four zero two graduated. Let's see our, recruits there, and it's a good group. I'm really proud to have them all on. They've been online for a couple of weeks. The graduation was pretty cool.

We we don't normally have them here in city hall, so it was a a different thing for us to do and was received well. So we'll see what we plan on doing in the future. In '25 this year, what we did, we posted in a caddy that what that means is we're actually opening up recruitment so that we can have a recruitment list so that when we need to hold another academy to fill vacancies, we can do that. So we're starting the whole process to have

a list on on hand.

On the fifteenth of this month, I would like to thank our brothers and sisters in HPD. We joined with them to put on an active shooter drill here for city staff. That followed and was after a training multiple days of training that we did here in classroom sessions, actually in this room, where police and fire staff talked about how to react and what to do in that type of situation. This drill gave them an opportunity to put that into practice. It's all it's one thing to talk about things and say, this is what we're going to do.

It's a totally different thing when you actually put it into place and run a drill. Even though you know it's a drill, there's that anxiety in the air. I'm sitting on the 4th Floor. I knew it was gonna be starting sometime after 01:00, but I didn't know exactly when. And you're like, when is this? When is it gonna happen? Right? It should be happening now. And, yeah, you know, you're not hearing anything. And then all of a sudden, I heard one of people in the city manager's office say, it's going down.

So she got a text from somebody on the 1st Floor, and then I heard footsteps, and I never saw anybody again, which is exactly what we needed to do. So thank you for the partnership with PD. It was great. Thank you to the city manager's office for allowing us to close down City Hall for an hour and a half so that we could do the drill without, putting the public in harm's way while that drill was going. And then the last thing I would like to speak about is our, LA fire response.

On January 7 at 11:00 at night, we ended up sending 10 of our fire personnel out personnel out to Los Angeles. We did that in the way of two engines and then a strike team leader and a strike team leader training. Then on January 10, we sent out one of our captains and battalion chiefs for two different in two different capacities. The captain responded as a member of the FEMA USAR task force that was tasked with going through the areas that had been burned out and trying to identify where victims were. So they were going home by home doing a a search to try and find people's loved ones.

The time she tailed the bread went down, and he was assigned to the division leader on the Palisades fire, and that's just the higher management level on the scene of the fire. Engine nine returned home on January 20. And as of today, the gentleman who was out with the USAR team is currently on the road coming home. And we have seven people that are still out on the fire lines. They've been all over.

They went down to San Diego. And now from what I understand, it looks like they're at this new fire called the Hughes Fire, which is North of Santa Clarita and has already burned over 5,000 acres today. So it's not over and out of the woods yet. And that is the end of my report, unless you have questions.

Thank you. Yeah. For someone to say, I saw Facebook ads recruiting for candidates, so that that was great. Like, you're getting the word out there. That was good. And I was really honored to be there at the graduation. It was really neat to see everyone, you know, that graduates with their families. That was really I it was really meaningful to me to be there. So that was cool. And then I you know, since Ray's not here, I'm gonna channel Ray and just say so it sounds like the the the safety training went well here at City Hall. And I think he would say, are you gonna plan something similar at the mall and maybe at a school? Those same sort of joint efforts. Because if like you said, I can imagine even though, you know, it's training that everyone still sort of gets on edge enough to have to be in a stressful situation to see if people remember their training. Right? Yeah.

We do not have any of those drills set up as of now, but we do realize the need for having drills like that off-site from city hall. So that is something that we will look to do in the future. Just gonna be having to find the time with all groups, all parties involved, and make that work.

Oh.

Did you wanna answer that, chief Matthews?

I can add a little bit. The, mall is hosting a training exercise, I think, coming up here pretty quick, and deputy chief Deplich can, provide additional information. But, we were notified late. The Urban Area Securities Initiative, UASI, which is a a federal funded entity is is holding an active shooter exercise over at the mall. We have trained at the mall property in years past with our fire partners and emergency medical staff, and we've also trained in the past at each one of the high schools. So just wanted to add that context based on the question.

Thank you. Yeah. Great. I just didn't know that he's brought that up in the past. And then lastly, I just wanna say thanks for guys that went down to and girls down to LA because it was really hard to watch. My my brother actually lives in Westlake Village, so I'm constantly watching to see where they're going, and they've had their bags packed just in case it heads that way. So, yeah, thanks for everyone down there. Yeah.

I will say just in response to that, it is a good thing for us to be able to help, right, and to be able to send down. It's just it's only human. That's what we want to do. Right? But with you supporting us being involved in this mutual aid program, what it does is it allows others that are gonna be more than happy to reciprocate if there's ever a time when we need it. But I think also what is very important is that all of those people who were down there are witnessing and experiencing and learning and gaining experience that they're gonna bring back here. And I just it is invaluable what they're learning out there that they can bring back to us.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks. Just a couple quick comments. One is well, first of all, I I wanted to thank the fire department, you know, on the on the tenth. I know there were some sort of rearranging around to accommodate two big events that happened on the tenth.

And so I just wanted to say thank you for that. And, you know, the graduation, absolutely, I think, you know, the the graduations are always very special events, very much like graduation with all the pomp and circumstance. And I I think sociologically speaking, we need those. You know? I think communities and and departments and organizations, they need those sort of touch tone moments.

Families need them. And, you know, not to, not to channel Durkheim too much, but, you know, communities demark time in very different ways. And one way we demark time is, is through ceremonies, right, and through these kinds of things. So they're important. And so, I've always enjoyed participating in these.

I know the police department does them also, and they they are important. I also wanted to thank the fire department for really, you know, helping my office with the Alameda County mayor's conference. To just to put it bluntly, you guys killed it. The, you know, the other mayor, city managers, you know, I go to these conferences every month. Some are good.

Some, less good. But, I think what what we did and what you guys did for the bears of Alameda County on the tenth, it just really or on the Eighth. On the eighth, really it showed off the department and just was a it was a class class act. And I think it was a it really was sort of a master's seminar on how to put on a mayor's event. And so he was I wait.

What you guys did was was great. I was sometime in the night, I was trying to pull off a joke, but I couldn't get the joke off. But I, you know, I was gonna warn everybody that if they saw the fire truck behind the stage take off, you know, then we were in trouble.

But

but you know? But, anyways, I I just wanted to I wanted to say thank you for that, and I appreciate it. Mayors, they did tell me they enjoyed it and so forth. So thank you. The other you had mentioned the and I forget how you what you called it, but it was the the safety, the rescue engine, or the the rescue truck. And I just wanted to wanted to sort of explore that a little bit. What what what is uniquely different on that truck? What does it have? Who's

the crew? So I will defer to chief Hammer on this because he is a member of our California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force for and heads up the rescue team here in Hayward.

Yes. So it's a it's a medium rescue, which is designed for technical rescue. So the scope scope being from some of the intents we got over the last several years to get real rescue, technical stuff, confined space, trench rescues, lot of construction going on in our city, a lot of development, which brings those incidents. Structural collapse, it definitely will help us for we're telling the first man here for preparing for the Hayward fall. And we're kinda getting to the point something started, like, ten years ago where we have a great facility to train for all those things, breach and breaking, obstruction class, bleeding blood tissues.

This will be the first dedicated piece of equipment that will support that. And then we've just set it up to where we have staff that are specialized in those areas and have requirements that will not only keep them up to speed, but they'll be cleared on trainings for the rest of the department to bring all

of us up to speed. So as so two things. One, as development continues along the Mission Boulevard corridor, is also the the fault line, I mean, would this would we need more? Would would we need another, you know, piece of equipment or, you know, or an engine? The other thing that concerns me too is well, the Cal State East Bay is up there, of course.

But something to think about, the school district is looking at putting well, they're gonna build, Brent Hart Middle School, up there. So, you know, taller buildings, more people, you know, does it look like we might need another one? I mean, it's just, you know, given how long it takes to get them. You know?

I'm going to say right now, I think the best way for us to move forward after that would be to, secure additional caches of supplies, maybe even a trailer or two that has more supplies that we can get to the scene. My opinion now is I think if we were looking to do more along those lines, I think we if we were to strategically place caches of those type of supplies there and then staff up a new engine company or rescue squad like we like we have squad two, I think would be a good use of our resources moving forward because then we could assign, if we have a bigger way, the the rescue squads or those new pieces to go get the rescue caches and bring them to the sites that we need. The rescue that we have now is gonna be great for our day to day rescue scenes. Like, if we do have a trench rescue or a rope rescue, that kind

of thing that we can go and handle, and they'll be the first out for any of those kind of responses out there. So, you know, I know that I know we have one fault line along Mission Boulevard underneath, you know, just right across the street. I mean, is it I'm trying to visualize it. I mean, is it feasible? I mean, in the event of something major, I mean, are we talking about, like, earth splitting, and would we be able to get from, you know, Mission Boulevard to the Hayward Hills? I mean, how would how would that happen?

I mean, I technically, yes. It would depend on the size of the the magnitude of the earthquake and then where what's actually there, you know, when it does rupture. But I would also say that probably more likely and more disruptive than the likelihood of a big fissure rupturing in in the middle of the street would be the collapse of overpasses and bridges that are going to impede our ability to get back and forth and across. That's why I think we were to do the model that I was just talking about where we would have supply caches on either side. Right?

We would have some strategically around the city so that we could have supplies available immediately on on either side of north and south. But then the other piece of that is part of the debris management plan that we've been working on is as quickly as we can getting dozers through and into the city so that we can clear essential pathways and thoroughfares to make sure that we can get emergency traffic through.

So so now now I'm thinking about something different than differently here. You know? So right now, and if for just sort of a little context, in the next five to six years, you know, ACTC and Caltrans are funding new overpasses. The Whipple, Industrial, Winton, a street. Well well, a street, just gonna widen and and they're gonna but, hey.

My my my point is this. Yes. The overpass is, you know, collapsing and all that. So shouldn't we be thinking about, should Caltrans and should we be telling Caltrans to start thinking about, you know, emergency pathways in the event let's take West Winton. Let's say West Winton collapses. That's, a major thoroughfare. I mean, shouldn't should there be, like, a a a a small road on the side, you know, that that just literally, you know, goes down into the, you know, 880 Freeway and comes back up on the on the other side of West Winston? Mean, should we I mean, sort of

think whether or not they would put that into their budget. I I don't know. My my hope would be that if they're building new overpasses and bridges, that they're going to be up to the latest and greatest earthquake standards, and that hopefully they're designing overpasses that will not collapse. And then we'll be able to not only travel under but over. So but that's definitely something we can entertain on

because that because that's happening. I mean, they're they're talking about it. I mean, it's gonna happen. I mean, you know, we we you know, a couple years ago, we we saw the first round of plans that came across. I mean, it's gonna happen. You know? And and and in fact, I I think I even you know, ACTC has already began to, you know, basically start allocate you know, not allocating, but segregating those funds to get, you know, put the plan, you know, to do it. So, anyways, it's just something to think about now. I didn't see if

director Mary is involved in that at this point.

Sure. Yeah.

So we'll talk to him and run that fine. Yeah.

It's all the stardom was at the truck, but, you know, I I did. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

I just wanted to ask really quickly, you know, thinking about the LA fires. Like, are there any lessons we can learn yet here that we do have hills and we do have some dense neighborhoods up there as far as, you know, the whole I think, you know, we talked a little bit about the wire the water situation. Is there anything we could learn to help in such a situation in the hills here? You know, just the way the water depleted, and I don't know. Then is it just plain zone, you know, like defense at that point to try to get

it from spreading across, like, Mission Boulevard? There is always something that we can learn as first responders and Canadians from every disaster that that happens. Right? Everything that we do as far as our responses and EOC training and all that kind of stuff, it's all based on best practices that were all developed in response to disaster after disaster after disaster. So, yes, there are.

And, that's the second half of our presentation that's coming up. Chip Hamry is gonna talk a lot about the LA fires, what we've learned from them, and then how they apply to our situation and and what we are doing now and what we're hoping to do in

the near future. Great. Good.

Then I believe that. Thank you.

Okay. Let's go to the next slide.

Yeah.

Should have said that, I would have stopped. I did. Oh,

taking. Alright. Am I up?

I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll go to okay. Yeah. Yes.

Alright. Well, good evening. I apologize, for not being there in person. I'm off-site with all of the Alameda County police chiefs and the sheriff doing some collective learning, and information sharing. So I'll return tomorrow, but, happy to be here tonight to present. And if I could get, Lauren or somebody to go ahead and load the slide. It's not showing up on my end here.

That's okay. Try again. Oh,

it looks like it's coming up. Okay. I got it. Alright. So for the time period of October through December 2024, this is the slide that reflects kind of our general crime data.

I know that some of the feedback we got in the last meeting was that there was too much on this slide, so we tried to dial it down, and we're gonna continue to work on that. But, as you can see, we're up about 6.5%, in crimes against persons as, compared to the same time period last year. Significantly down, though, on crimes against property, down a little over 30%, which is which is incredible. And I think, you know, if you look to the left there, I I put the images of our flock camera program and Peregrine, some of the techno technology solutions, the count council has authorized for us because, I think there's two things that have happened, since we onboarded. There's improvements in solvability based on new evidence that we otherwise wouldn't have.

And I think that there's also a deterrent effect to bring it on technology solutions when people know that they're on camera coming into our city to do whatever it is that they're gonna do. You know, oftentimes, they'll look for alternative places to go, and that's a good thing. And then crimes against society, we were also down, and those are typically crimes that don't necessarily have an individual victim. So drug possession, drug sales, those types of crimes are also down. Next slide, please.

As you can see, the top five reported crimes, even though we're down 30% in property crime, it is still our top reported crimes. There's simple assault is is a crime against person, and everything else is is property related. So motor vehicle theft, vandalism, larceny, and burglary. Some of our trends have continued from the last meeting, so we are continuing to see burglaries utilizing a vehicle to breach the building. We are continuing to see some arsons in the downtown area and have made four arrests in those cases.

Jugging robberies are still occurring. And and just as a refresher, jugging is a is a term that refers to individuals who wait outside of financial institutions, often banks, and target people that they believe, have cash. And so one of the things that we've encouraged folks to do, obviously, is to be aware of surroundings. If you see people sitting in vehicles outside of a financial institution and they don't appear to be conducting business, that's something that we would wanna know about. So we encourage people to reach out via 911 if they're witnessing suspicious activity like that.

And then we are seeing businesses being targeted for cigarettes both in robberies and burglaries. And one of the things that we've encouraged people to do, particularly when we see certain items in the region, this is not just a Hayward issue, certain items that are popular, when it comes to theft, we encourage, folks to take proactive measures to secure those. Don't leave them by the door, put them behind, you know, locked plastic like we see in some of the department stores. And so we're working with our crime, prevention folks to make sure that, businesses know that. Next slide, please.

School data from October to December, we had a total of 394 responses to school campuses here in the city. Elementary schools, there were a 157, middle schools, 57, and high schools, there were one hundred one hundred and eighty high school campuses continue to be the largest consumer of our services. And there's an individual high school breakdown that's on the slide for our four high schools in the city. Again, this does include non business, non school hours, and we continue to work with the school, on preparedness, on safety issues. We have a sergeant who, is the assigned liaison with the school district, and so there's regular conversations and information sharing that happens there.

Next slide, please. And this last slide is for our staffing update. We have 20 police 28 police officer vacancies and 20 professional staff vacancies. If you include those that are off on injury and in various stages of training, we have 30% of our sworn workforce that's still unavailable. The good news is that we are graduating five individuals from the academy at the end of the month, and then we are in line to send 11 trainees to the academy, which starts in March.

And since I've been here, I think that's the largest class that we've ever had. So, that is good news in spite of our vacancy rate. And that is it for my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Shameverse? Sure.

Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Yeah. Really great to see the property crimes down 30%. I wanted to ask, you know, you don't hear so much about catalytic converter crimes lately. Is that just because people stop complaining about it, or is that actually down?

That is actually down, and I think there's a couple of things. There was legislation passed by the state, that actually in increased the regulations on the part of the metal recycling companies. One of the issues that was driving that particular crime, was the recycling companies that were just accepting catalytic converters with no questions asked, and and people were getting paid for them. And so, and we and we saw, through some investigations that we did with other law enforcement partners here in the region, that a lot of these metal recycling companies were actually they had employees that would stay late. Business hours would end, and they would stay there and take these things, after hours and during the night.

And so that has, subsided a little bit, but now, anybody, that shows up with one of these things is required to produce identification. There's a whole series of steps that metal recycling companies have to go through before they accept catalytic converters. And because of that, I think we've seen a significant drop in that particular crime. So that's a good thing.

Yeah. And, know, I know you did the etching program that was a success, right, as far as people showing up. Did that have any impact? Like, did that or did they just burn them off before they took them in? Like, how how did that affect anything?

So I don't have any specific information about any of the etching that we did and those being stolen. Right? But, you know, I mean, I think some of the metal companies, you know, there's there's not only people that are doing the theft get paid, but the metal companies, you know, they're making money recycling these things. And so, in some cases, you know, they weren't worried about whether or not they had serial numbers, I don't think. And so, you know, and I know that, consumers can go out and purchase now a kit that you can put around your catalytic converter that, will help secure it, although it's not foolproof. You know, they still can be stolen. But, you know, we we don't have any direct data with respect to our program.

Have you thought of are you gonna do it again, or are you still waiting are you still deciding whether it was, helpful as far as deterring that crime?

No. I think, you know, the hope is always to do it again, and I think, you know, it's it's dependent upon staffing. We partnered with ROP, to get the last one done, but it does require, staff time on our part, and it also requires them, to be able to have the capacity to do it as well. But the the goal would be to do more of those on a more regular basis if we can.

Okay. Thanks. And then on the arson, you said there were four arrests downtown. I know that they're not all necessarily still, you know, being held. But do you see any hope down the road, you know, with changing the guard of the DA to potentially have more tools to keep some of these guys? Or you know, because, I mean, this is deterring, you know, people from wanting to do business downtown knowing that there is these arsons.

So it's a topic of conversation that's happening right now with the county chiefs at this conference, and I I don't it's not just specific to the arson issue. Right? We're well aware of the process that's going on right now with the county board of supervisors and the selection of an interim DA. And all of the conversations, you know, I think there's and we've had this conversation before, individually with with you folks. There there's a balance that needs to be struck between holding people accountable and meaningful reform, and they can live in the same space. They're not opposite sides of the street. And I think one of the things that is at the top of conversations in law enforcement circles, including the DA's office, because we do have a representative here,

is

is taking a different approach approach specifically on individuals who continue to engage in the same conduct, the repeat offenders. The folks that we've arrested for the downtown arson activity have histories. Right? This is not their first offense. This is not the first time they've engaged in that conduct. And so what does that mean from a prosecution standpoint? And that's a collective conversation that continues to happen here in the county.

Great. Thanks. And then

And just to add to that. Yep. I don't know if you caught the news today, but the the the family of the of the woman who was pushed into the BART tracks at the BART station, The the the the person who pushed the woman in the BART tracks was a known person in BART, and they're suing the BART they're suing BART right now because of you know, the the person was barred from Bart, and he had been known amongst anyways, he was known, and it still happened. And that and it's that question that they're suing Bart for.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, glad you guys are having the discussion. Hopefully, you know, there'll be some changes down the road. Just two quick more things. One, I wanted to ask about, you know, what the this is sort of a personal thing, but what what the family services bureau is doing to help the schools and vaping issues. And I I'm not just talking about THC. You know, they they're also using I mean I mean, tobacco is also THC, and it's just it's such a it's so prevalent in schools. I I know we don't have SROs in schools anymore, but I do know that there's an education program at Family Services Bureau. Is there anything I mean, would just like to see a little bit more proactive, you know, work collaboration with the schools because it's just everywhere.

Kids are getting addicted. I mean, they're starting in sixth grade in the East Coast. I had a friend whose whose kid went to had to go to rehab in sixth grade. And the dealers, you know you know, they somehow get the kids, the stuff. They bring them on campus. And and while I understand it's not your job to monitor the schools, I do feel like as a clever enough for the city and the and the police department and the schools that if there's anything we can do to be a little bit more aggressive on that, whether it's just education to parents, I would be interested in that.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think we're committed to staying engaged on that issue. I think, you know, when it comes to in the moment vaping or smoking, or consuming, you know, on school campuses, you know, that responsibility to address that risk with the schools. Right? We don't have a footprint there, but, our youth and family service counselors are embedded at school sites. They are there on a regular basis, and they do address that particular issue through education, counseling, mentoring, and we're gonna continue to do that to the extent that we can. I recognize that that is a widespread issue. That's not just here in the Hayward Unified School District and not just with our kids. A lot of kids engage in that activity, and so we'll continue to to partner with the school district and do that work. It's important.

Thanks. Yeah. I just wanted to keep raising that one. And then the last thing is, you know, we had some recent activity at Weeks Park. I just wanted to thank the department because we got some feedback that it was handled compassionately, a very difficult situation, but but handled compassionately as as much as it could be. And so I just wanna thank you for that your part in that.

Thank you.

I have no questions.

I got you. That's why. Alright.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Now we go on to item number four, which is police training curriculum and schedule, and you can get a board report.

Alright. Me again. Go ahead and click the next slide. So one of the things that we, got feedback on and wanted to bring to you was kind of an overview of our training curriculum for calendar year 2025. But before we do that, you know, I wanna talk a little bit about our training philosophy, some of the requirements that exist, and then touch on a project that we are seeking to bring here to the Hayward Police Department that is pretty unique right now and not very wide spread in this in The United States.

And so I'll talk a little bit about that at the end of this. So go ahead and click to the next slide. So, as far as our training philosophy is concerned, and I'll summarize it, it's, we can't get enough training. Right? And I don't I don't think we do have enough training.

And if money and time weren't obstacles, we'd have a whole lot more of it, if I had my way. But I do wanna touch on CALIA, and the year end reporting that we do through that particular accreditation process. Every year, the internal affairs unit produces, annual year end reports. These are data based reports on things like use of force, vehicle pursuits, community member complaints. There's a variety of topics that, they compile into a report that gets provided to me.

And then, we use these to identify trends, training gaps, and organizational needs. So as a command staff, we have conversations about where these gaps are, what we need to to bring and build into the training curriculum in the following year. So this this happens on an annual basis because we wanna be informed on our needs and using data and and not just guessing. Right? As far as POST is concerned, it POST is an acronym for peace officer standards and training.

That's the state entity that basically designates what training is required for each individual police officer, and it's also the same entity that manages the s p two decertification process. There are requirements for every individual police officer to go through continuous professional training. Their requirements, are that we have CPT as we refer to it, twenty four hour twenty four hours of it every two years. That's the minimum requirement by post, and it's on topics that they consider to be perishable skills. So tactical firearms, vehicle operations, arrest and control, strategic communications, and use of force are the perishable skills program topics that we're required, to train on every two years.

Go ahead to the next slide. We far exceed those requirements here at the police department. So every officer at Hayward PD attends ninety hours of continuous professional training on an annual basis. That's broken down into, I believe it's nine, ten hour training days. I'll cover that in a minute.

But we train on a variety of topics, and we typically classify training into three categories, mandatory, discretionary, and kinda community driven. So mandatory training would be stuff that's required by post, stuff that, is mandated based upon some law or legislative change. Discretionary chain training is not necessarily required, but it's designed to improve our performance in organizational operations. And then community driven is not required, but it's on topics that are very important to the community based on current issues or conversations. An example of that would be training that was provided by our local chapter of the NAACP.

We brought them into the police department a couple of years ago to provide training to our entire department, both sworn and professional staff, on topics like the history of policing and and its impact to communities of color, perceptions of the things like that. It was actually a great training, a lot of positive feedback from our staff, about the conversations were that were had in that space. In addition to continuous professional training, individual officers have to go to training on a regular basis depending on their specific assignment. So, for example, a patrol officer that's transitioning to a detective position, you know, will have to attend specific training off-site that's specific to that assignment. Same thing with traffic, you know, same thing with other units in our police department.

And so that's in addition to what we provide as a department on an annual basis. Next slide, please. So for the 2025 training calendar, talk a little bit about the development. So this process begins in the fall, typically, with where we identify dates and then we identify some topics that, you know, again, are mandated. We often run into the issue of having more topics than we do time.

Our personnel and training unit, under the supervision of captain Heather Lentayo, manages and maintains all of our training records and sets a schedule. Our training calendar and the outlines are available for public consumption on the on our website, and then we have flexibility. So as things happen during the course of the calendar year, we have the ability to pivot and add or delete or change or consolidate time, you know, based on on what's going on in that moment or based on operational needs. So for 2025, each officer is gonna receive ten hours of CPR and first aid training, basic first aid tactical medicine and policy related issues. They're gonna receive fifteen hours of arrest and control training.

So legal and legislative updates, there is a component of that training that requires them to perform physical techniques. We incorporate de escalation techniques into all of our arrest and control training now, and then there's ongoing policy review that's required of every officer. Next slide, please. Firearms related training, fifteen hours of that. Again, legal and legislative updates. There are physical techniques that they have to show proficiency in. We call it qualification. So they have to be able to perform at a certain level. Otherwise, we will not allow them to carry a firearm. Again, we build in de escalation techniques into that training.

We train on some of the less lethal tools that we have in the department, and then there's ongoing policy review that takes place there for each officer. This year, we are doing active shooter response, ten hours of training on that. We typically do that every other year, and we try to rotate, as I mentioned earlier, locations where, you know, there is a possibility for this to happen. We wanna understand what the layout looks like, and practice moving through places like the mall, places like schools, city hall, places where people gather. So every officer is gonna go through some legal and legislative updates, response protocols, and policy review.

And this training is very heavily scenario based, so there is a classroom component to it, but a majority of that training is in the field responding to scenarios that our instructors create for them. Ten hours of emergency vehicle operations, driving awareness, code three response, pursuit driving, pursuit intervention technique, and then, again, legal and policy review. They're gonna go through a ten hour force options and de escalation technique training specific to scenarios that we designed for them. Right? Consistently, studies have shown that scenario based training is the most effective.

It's one thing to talk about when and when not to, which is also just as important to use force. In a classroom setting, it's another thing to put somebody in a situation where you create a stressful environment. They have to make decisions. And then in the moment, you spend time with them kinda debriefing what went well and what they can do better. And so we're we're very much believers in that.

So this is scenario based design and improved decision making, practical application of law and policy, and and probably most importantly, communication, how we talk to people. Next slide, please. We are gonna have ten hours of investigations in domestic violence training. Again, legal and legislative updates, investigative techniques, policy. And then we'll have a ten hour training day of of ethics and employee wellness.

This is a facilitated discussion on ethics and its importance in law enforcement. And then we have a company that we contract with that provides training on physical, emotional, mental, social, and financial health, and then I present on kind of the current events in the department in the city. So that's our training calendar for this this upcoming year, again, with the flexibility to make changes as we need to as we move through the year. One more slide, please. And then I wanna talk briefly about this, and we'll get into more depth in-depth conversations about this as we move towards it.

But, there's a project called active bystandership for law enforcement. And simply put, you know, we talk in policy and in conversation about, intervention and the need to intervene. Right? It's actually specifically written in our use of force policy. But what we don't do in law enforcement is we don't provide officers with tools and strategies on how to do that.

And we also haven't create created a culture where people, engage in intervention, and also are are accepting of intervention. Right? And so this is a project that was developed by Georgetown University, their center for innovations in community safety, and it's designed to provide officers with tools and strategies to intervene, to prevent harm, create a culture that supports peer intervention, on both sides. Right? Intervening and then also receiving it, and then it helps avoid misconduct, prevent mistakes, and promote officer officer health and wellness.

So this is a research and evidence based program. It doesn't cost anything, which is awesome, and there's voluntary enrollment as long as we commit to creating a culture through policy training support and accountability that's designed around intervention. And so there is a website that people can take look at. If you tack if you type in active bystandership for law enforcement project, it'll come up on Georgetown University's website. I'm particularly excited about this.

Once we sign on to it, I think in April, we have some spaces secured. They come out, and they provide training to our staff to be instructors, and then we're gonna provide this training, to the entire department either this calendar year or at the beginning of next calendar year. So we'll we'll see what the timeline looks like once we're on board with that. I looked at the website. I wanna say that there are only 400 agencies in The United States that participate in this at this point, and I think there's over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in The United States. So we'll be one of the first to bring this on board. And that's all I have on training, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Okay. I'm up. Thanks. Yeah. That it's really interesting to hear. I just wanted to ask well, first of never heard of the term perishable skills, so that was cool. Mhmm. I'm trying to understand that, you know, what that means. It makes sense. And then as far as topics, like, can you give an example of when you might because it seems like I don't know. It seems like topics would be pretty set. Like, what what's the topic that would all of sudden change your schedule for the year that you might add to it?

I was gonna bring it over here. Immigration.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if if there's a specific issue that the community is experiencing and we have a policy or a practice, that may be something that we wanna revisit to make sure that everybody's on the same page. There are training topics that we didn't build in this year that we've had in years past. So, you know, you know, unconscious bias training, you know, there's there's a there's a host of different things, you know, that that we would potentially train on.

Thanks. Yeah. And I I'm glad you did the legislative updates because I think things are gonna be changing, you know, quickly. And and so I I think it's gonna be really important that you constantly do that, you know, that everyone is aware of where things are changing and what it means in Hayward. Yeah. Especially around your your what you're talking about. Yeah. Last thing I wanna ask about the active shooter response. You know, I I recently went to, you know, with the principal at my kid's school, and, they were talking a little bit about active shooter drills. And they said, since Uvalde, the new protocol is to have the kids just run.

And that was news to me, and I I was wondering, is that the kind of thing you work with the schools on those sort of updates? Is that true? You know, which makes sense to me, you know, given the hunker down method and work in that scenario. Is that are those legislative updates that are like, those are the kind of things you also work with the school on?

Yeah. We do. We provide training to school staff. You know, they the sad reality is that every school in the country now has a protocol for a response to this. Right? Because since the year 2000, the FBI publishes data on this. And annually, it's it's gone up significantly since 2000, which is really heartbreaking. So we do work with the school district to make sure that they understand. The federal government put out a video. It's like a six minute video that you can find online, and they talk about, you know, run, hide, fight, right, in that order.

So if you're close to an exit and you can get out safely, that's priority one. Priority two would be to hide somewhere and and lock the door and shelter in place for lack of a better term. And then, you know, what one of the outcomes of the Virginia Tech shooting, thirty three students lost their life in that one. And, one of the pieces of information that came afterwards was no nobody did anything. Everybody just sat there. And it wasn't until law enforcement breached the hallway, that that individual, I think, took his own life. And so, as a as a last resort, if you can't run and you can't hide

Right.

You know, we encourage people not to just sit there.

Okay. Yeah. Thanks. And then the last thing is, you know, the by the active bystandership, is that in a situation where, you know, the police are engaging with somebody and then the bystanders start getting out of control? Is that or, you know, they start getting angry and they need their own management. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?

So it's there's a couple of different context for it. So when we talk about intervention, right, we talk about it when we have conversations around specifically use of force. And so, you know, the the murder of George Floyd is a perfect example where you had an officer engaging in conduct and three or four others that were just standing there, and nobody did anything. So we have language in our use of force policy that mandates that officers intervene, especially if it looks like we're moving down the path of, engaging in some form of excessive force. Right?

There's an obligation that every staff member has, but what we don't talk about and what we don't teach people is how to actually do that. And so, the other context is in the wellness context. Right? We recognize that, you know, policing and and working in law enforcement, especially over a period of time, you're exposed to trauma on a regular basis. You know, it accumulates over time.

It could create issues for our staff. And so when you have a staff member that you recognize is going through it, you know, there's a need to intervene there too. Right? And we we don't talk about, ways to do that. And so this program is designed to empower our staff to be able to know, what to do and when, and then also understand, you know, that that it's necessary to be able to accept that, especially if, you know, you're going through it. So

Alright. Thanks for that clarification. I I didn't really say it was for the officer as a bystander in a scenario like that. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Pete. So,

you know, I wanna I wanna focus on, you know, what I've been seeing on the news and just, you know, reading the paper regarding immigration and the president's direct you know, his executive orders and his directors that he's been sort of delivering. And, you know, of course, there's a lot of concern. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of anxieties. You know, I'm getting calls.

As you know, there's a lot of misinformation getting posted online. So I I guess the question is is in this environment, especially right now where everything we watch on television, it's polarizing, it's inflammatory, you know, what are we doing? Or or, you know, what can how can we train either, you know, our officers or even professor professional staff around, good verified information, making sure that gets out properly, especially around, you know, clarifying between, you know, criminal warrants and immigration warrants. And I guess there's you know, how do we sort of make sense of that? And how do we sort of, you know, really generate some good informative information that we can deliver out there?

I guess that's the if that makes any sense.

Yeah. It does. And and I will tell you that, it has been the topic of conversation here this week. We actually had our legislative advocate who works directly for the California Chiefs Association, was here to provide an update, and it is a very hot topic right now in Sacramento. He has a direct line, to all of the legislators in both the the assembly and the senate.

So there's a lot of conversations going on about that right now. I will tell you that our position as a police department, our policy, and our practice has not changed and and will not. One of the things that we actually have a meeting scheduled tomorrow morning and then I think another one on Friday morning to address this very issue. I've had conversations about, with, Chuck Finney and the communications team about creating an FAQ of frequently asked questions with some bullet points that we can disseminate not only to staff, so that we're all passing along the same message, but also, to the community. And I think it's important for people to understand what we can and are willing to do and what we are not.

Our policy, four fifteen, addresses this specifically. That is available online. All of our policies are available on our website, for public consumption, but that that's the policy that specifically addresses this issue. You raised a great point. There's a difference between a criminal warrant, where a judge, has ordered somebody to be taken in custody based on conduct, right, the crime that has been committed.

And it doesn't matter whether that's, you know, a case that's being investigated by Homeland Security or ICE or the FBI, or the DEA or any of the other federal agencies. If somebody has a warrant for a criminal offense, we have an obligation to take that person, into custody and deliver it to the investigating deliver them to the investigating agency. That's not, that hasn't changed. But what we're talking about is, you know, with with respect to ICE, civil civil warrants that are issued for the purpose of, you know, deporting individuals, and we do not engage in any of that nor do we provide ICE any information. We, you know, we have ALPRs and other information gathering systems that we share locally with some of our other law enforcement partners for the purpose of addressing regional issues, but we do not share information with, you know, with ICE.

And that's that's not gonna change. I'm happy to sit down and have conversations, with anyone who wants to talk about these issues. I recognize that there's a lot of community fear right now around this. And I totally understand that, and we wanna do what we can to make sure that, a, we're empathetic and we're listening to the needs of our community, and, b, we wanna make sure that people have, valid information. We're all familiar with the misinformation that went out a week or so ago, when another law enforcement agency, was in town engaging in an investigation, and and people believed that it was ICE, and it was not.

So happy to continue to make sure that people are informed, to the extent that we can.

There's there's another report, read this morning that, there's possib there's an attempt or there's, you know, discussion around deputizing local municipal police officers as border patrol agents.

Yeah. That's that's that's not gonna happen. And I think that the other piece, that I've been reading because we've been sharing information as a group of chiefs here, is, you know, even though these executive orders have been signed and statements have been made, and policy decisions have been made, you know, the legal challenges are already starting to come. And so I guarantee you this is stuff that will be challenged from a legal perspective, not only by the state of California. I know that that's that's the case. I I think some of the immigration stuff is already being challenged by 22 states. I read that just a little while ago. And so

So while so I so that's great. And I'm I'm and I think that I have total faith in our police department knowing, you know, the leadership that we have that the what concerns me is, you know, do we have an a a a good information generation process where you know? Because people are watching the news in English and in Spanish. Right? And they're seeing these things, and then they go they go to social media, and then they start calling everybody out.

Right? Or they'll go the or they'll go to email, and they'll start emailing us. And and so, you know, what I I guess the I guess the point I'm making is is, you know, our information generating mechanism here in the building or at at the police department, you know, what are we doing or, you know, what are we training for to to make sure the information we have is is accurate? Well, one is the law, is our policy, and then is accurate. Yes. Yes. And that that's the that's the

So, mister May, if I may if I may, chief.

Sure.

There's references that have been made about meetings that are taking place this week by chief Matthews. And I'd like to speak a little bit of that because I will bring to light what we're trying to accomplish here. We're having a meeting first day tomorrow morning with our legal team and our police department to understand really the the genesis and the ruling the legal ruling of our sanctuary city so that we can end the protocols in the event that they are signing suffice or any enforcement immigration enforcement in nearby cities or in the city of Hayward. What does that mean? And and following up with that discussion, in terms of the protocols of the police department, but also the protocols internally here in notification to council, in the in what would trigger additional actions pertaining to the management of social media and public information.

The following day on Friday, once we understand that piece, we're having another a large conversation with our partners pertaining primarily to communications, protocols that speak not only to public facing communications that involves certainly our public information officer, but also information that goes across a network of information channels with our partners that involves the schools, the faith community, and community based organizations. And then there's the internal protocol here that speaks to how do we address what was discussed at today's executive team meeting in terms of some of the anxieties and hesitations and concerns that are being felt by staff because they have family members that may be impacted by this executive order. And so we're addressing how do we communicate internally and how do we train and empower people to address most concerns. And out of the discussion from the executive team, there was not only a lot of, urgency in being able to create a jointed effort that addresses all these areas, but also to educate people in terms of understanding what was the resolution that was passed by city council in establishment of a century city, and what does that really mean, and how do we operationalize that?

And what happens when it gets challenged or threatened, and how do we get information as quickly as possible to people when it matters the most? Kudos to chief Matthews. I don't want to embarrass him, but truly the scramble that we had on January 9, it was his leadership, his teams that was able to address that uncertainty that was growing on social media. And also kudos to Chuck Finney for assisting. And then I have to also say that at the library, our library director is shared today some of the things that she's seen and the challenges that have that were placed upon public libraries back in 2016, 2017, and what they see.

And and she's already very proactively distributing what they call red cards that provide people's rights. And most importantly, she's already in communication, which we'll going to get a briefing on that tomorrow morning with our legal department on the types of demands for information that may come to the library that may be legal or not legally challenged in terms of turning over information, in terms of who has the registered library card, what does that mean. So all of that is coming together very quickly. I wish I had more to share with you, but we are we shared the urgency, and we are coming together very quickly and more to follow.

Well, that's great. Great. That that's good. And, you know, just clearly by what you just articulated, it what I'm hearing is every single employee within the city of Hayward, regardless of the department you're in, is gonna be confronted with this. And and I say that because, you know, today, I read that, I mean, that they're targeting not only well, they're targeting schools, hospitals, and churches.

I mean and so we're gonna be we're gonna have to be trained and versed in those three four spaces, you know, municipal government, churches, schools, and hospitals. And, you know, and I don't know. You know, I know we have Saint Rowe, Saint Rowe's in the city, And, of course, you know, we're schools in every neighborhood. And and so anyways, I I just and and, yes, you're you are absolutely right. I and like I said earlier, right, I have absolutely total faith in our department, for the work family, for the track record they have, but just the leadership, and the positions that our leadership has taken on this on this issue, especially, you know, back in 2017.

And, you know, I feel like, you know, here we go again, in 2025. But, there was one other, one other point I was gonna make. But, anyways, I think that's it. Unless you had

No. I just wanted to add that, yeah, I mean, the school situation, that was so alarming to see because parents just won't bring their kids to school, you know, if they're worried that that's a place that they might, so I I think that communication should definitely include the school district to talk about what a sanctuary city really means. And, you know, I always heard that schools are sanctuary sites. And I remember you're right back when it happened before, there was this idea that if you just stayed on school property, he would be okay. And, you know, I think Or churches. Factualize. Sanctuaries.

I mean you know, for

the school as well as the city.

So, yeah, I'm interested. And then one more piece that I wanted to share is in the discussions of this issue, it came very it was crystallized that in terms of the impact for the community for the Hayward's community, we're looking at in, working in multiple languages and in multiple ethnic groups. Mhmm. It's not simply a Latino issue. Right. It's a Asia Pacific Islander issue, and it's a Muslim issue. Yeah. So those require different approaches and different tactics.

Good. Alright. Thank you. Well, and and, you know, in our they at this the the the the web of partners are gonna have to get wider and wider as as we move forward in this work. The other point I was gonna make, I guess, is that, you know, and the the community engagement work that both fire department and the police department are known for, and they have a strong track record in doing. You know? I know I don't need to say this, but I'll I'll say it just to say it. Continue that. You know? Stay in the community.

Stay engaged. And because trust me, and I I know you guys know this, it makes a difference. It may it really does make a big difference. When when kids know your names, when they when they see you, you know, you know, when they take selfies with you, when they take pictures with you, I mean, it makes a difference. It makes a difference. And, you know, it makes a difference. I was like, I said.

When they sell you a burger, I have stories. Yeah.

Yeah. That's our favorite part of the job.

Makes a difference.

Hanging out with the community. So and I will say just to add, you know, all the county chiefs and the sheriff are aligned on this issue as it relates to law enforcement. So on the police side, we do have a support network here, and and we're gonna continue to take care of our communities the way that we have. So Great.

Okay. Anything else?

One more second.

Okay. So I will close this item, and I will move on to item number five, emergency management plan review. And I believe that is that gonna be Bartram?

Thank you, mayor. So first thing I wanna talk about is a little bit of difference between a comprehensive emergency management plan versus a local hazard mitigation plan, which we now call a resilience plan, local resilience plan. A local hazard mitigation plan or resilience plan is where we take a deep dive. The city just finished one of these, a new one. Take a deep dive into what the hazards are in the community and come up with plans to work to mitigate those ahead of time to make it so that they are less likely to cause more harm.

So we try to it's kind of the prevention side after looking at what our vulnerabilities are. The comprehensive emergency plan is a little bit more based on what we do to manage the events once they do happen. So a little bit different, but very kinda intertwined. So with the comprehensive emergency management plan, I apologize that it has taken as long as it has to do what we did. We began the process to do an update.

It ended up being a rewrite, and there are a number of reasons why it's taken this long. I just wanna say I'm sorry it hasn't. We will have the staff report to you. Our goal is to have it in March for your review, and then hopefully, after that adoption shortly afterwards. But along the way, I think one of the biggest pieces of the comprehensive emergency management plan is our EOC, and it was really the room we're sitting in now used to be our EOC.

If you can imagine Emergency. Emergency operation center. Okay. If you imagine a large incident like an earthquake or what we're gonna talk about because chief Henry and I decided that it would be wise to maybe pare down what I'm gonna talk about with the comprehensive emergency management plan and talk a little bit about the the mitigation piece of the fires. So that's what we're doing tonight.

Anyway, emergency operations center used to be in this room. If you can imagine post earthquake having all the support, logistical support, all that stuff going for those incidents that are going on out there in just this room here, we would be a little bit cramped. So our new EOC is the training center. And I will say the majority of what we were doing during from August 22 to June 24 is exercising, training, and building up our, EOC staff capability. I will say that it's it's difficult because we do have a lot of people that are coming and going.

Right? We have people that we spend a lot of time training, and then they end up somewhere else, and so we have to train somebody else up. And it's it's just the nature of the business. But it was really good because we've got a solid foundation where we started out with just teaching and training people in each section of the emergency operation center, what their role and responsibility is for what that section that they're assigned to, and then what their individual goal is, their role is during an emergency operation. And then we stepped it up to hold tabletop exercises after that.

And then after that, again, we did large operations tabletop exercise. So we're pulling more and more people from the city together at the same time from with different jobs and tasks, and we're bringing them in the same room. And then the final culmination was June 24. We did our first full scale emergency operation center activation at the new site, and everybody was introduced to that. And, Lauren, do you remember how many staff we had participate in that?

Would say it was 45 to 55?

Yeah. It was a large group of our staff came down during this drill, and we exercised everything from our emergency callback to getting them into the building, setting up their workstations, logging into the computer system that we did training on that is what the the software program that the entire county uses for disaster management and communications. And we exercised the the whole thing. It was a coordinated drill that went was region wide. So we were participating.

Other cities in the county were participating. Our county EOC was participating and our region was. So we were able to exercise the whole thing from start to finish. We requested resources from the county. County said they couldn't get it. They requested up to the region. And so very successful training. In in my twenty five years here, that's the largest EOC drill that that I have ever seen, and it was really good. So with that, I will say that the goal is, like I said, to have a final review by our departments coming up very soon. Staff report to you in March.

And then we will start after March and April, we'll start looking at doing the tabletop exercises again with all the folks and then starting to do more of our drills and then another EOC comprehensive drill and all that kind of stuff. And one of the trainings that we will have for you is the council's role in a disaster. So it's a little different than, you know, being in the EOC and doing different things. There's there are specific functions and things that you all need to do, we'll include that into our training calendar also.

We'll do it together. Yep.

So, anyway, that's just a quick overview of of that plan. We'll have it to you later. But if you're good with it, I'd like to hand it over to chief Hammery where we can discuss the LA fires, what we learned from those from from people that things we've seen, people we know, people who were there that we've talked to, and then kinda bring it home to what we are doing and what we'd like to do. And, lastly, I would like to say that I am kind of excited that we have a new expert in fuel management with with our new, city manager. We had a quick discussion the other day about how she's had some experience with that in the Parks District.

So I think that's pretty cool.

It just you just rake the leaves. That what you do? Just rake it?

Just what? You get a $10,000,000. Just speaking.

Alright. I think we skipped ahead in two slides.

That's our drill. That picture there then.

I think in in this week, we've definitely monitoring the situation down south, talking to our partners and talking to the people that are on on the ground. I think one thing that's been a trend that we're seeing is the speed of information travel today. It's it's no different than fire service and how quickly there's a lot of exact answers to what the problem was and clarification follow-up to it within twelve, twenty four hours into an incident that's involving chaotic, very dynamic, complex incident. So first slide, just taking a step back from more of a 10,000 foot view. These are in California, these are the top 20 most destructive fires.

And there's lots of ways of sorting this. This chart sorts by destroyed structures. So houses, outbuildings, garages. And what it probably just jump out at you. It jumps out at me is that when I started my career, one of these fires was on this list. The other 19 are new. Mhmm. And really striking is out of this list, 14 of them are within the last seven and seven and a half, eight years. So in my career, I would say there's definitely been a change. These are fires that we were not seeing that we're seeing fairly consistently now.

The one exception to it is strikes very home to us. It's an Alameda County Fire, the tunnel fire in the Oakland Hills with 1999 1991. Everything after that is this century, and the majority is after 2017. So you're seeing your high structure losses, and you're also seeing a high corresponding loss of life. There's a lot of conversation out there on suppression, but I'm gonna take a break from that just for a second. We'll come back to it. What has been consistent, and you were talking a little bit earlier, raking. It's not as simple as raking, but the conversation does come up. There has been a century of suppression policies, And this isn't anybody that's in a position today to make those policies. These these stretch back to about 1910.

Basically, United States was burning down cities, going out to Wisconsin, Chicago. So suppression first, last, and always was the policy at the time because the cities weren't really built to defend once there was a fire. What's that resulted in? The landscape around us, fire would typically touch the ground at any point once a decade, clean up the fuels, trees would survive, put the down dead, some of the loose brush would get cleaned up. As a result, the ground around us typically gets fired about once every five decades.

So the fuel loading throughout California is significantly different than it used to be. Compounding the issue, we've expanded. There's been significant development throughout the state. And while we built up our forests, we've also put a lot of structures within those forests. So you have a very thick continuous fuel bed with houses, right, built into them. We love living here in California myself. I love the state, but there is some risk with that. The other challenge in that what's happening and we're definitely seeing or seeing, you know, right now this week, is the change in the weather pattern. And California historically has always had Northeast winds, north winds this time of year. Yeah.

We get the developments here. Down south gets the Santa Ana winds typically a little bit stronger. But if you go back to the tunnel fire, 65 mile winds coming out of the Northeast, which is a drier wind, which has a significant impact, which we got a tunnel fire. Down south, if you look at the dates on some of these, you see a lot of fires over in October. Camp fire up in Paradise was a November fire. These are the first two fires we've seen in January. Down south hasn't seen rain for a hundred days, so they have critical fire weather at the same time, really dry. Wind showed up at up to a 100 miles an hour. That

is a big difference. When I went to when I was in school down in Riverside, I just noticed it was windier. And, I mean, you know, that whole corridor, the 90 corridor was just incredible.

Santa Ana.

Yes. Santa Ana is and this is where, you know, when you're watching someone across the country speak to why didn't we just do this? You know, when crews get down there, they open the rig and the door almost folds on

itself because the wind is that strong. Exactly.

So we go to the next slide.

But what are the Santa Anas usually? Because they're not 100. Am I

They I mean, they don't always like, they're they have Santa Anas today. The fires that they're managing right now, the most huge fire in LA County. Mhmm. It's a 9,000 acre fire right now. Got a good run on it. But this 15 to 30 mile hour winds, so it's not spreading as fast. The other thing the difference between today's fire and last week is aircraft aren't grounded because the wind's so extreme. So they're making really good progress as we speak, and it looks like something they'll be able to manage without having the negative effects that Palisade and Eaton had. Pretty much Palisade, right in the middle of it, they had a ground aircraft. It's 7,800 mile winds.

You can't fly in that. And that's when the Eden fire, the second fire started during a regional drought drawdown of resources. So going back to problem identification, I think it's really important to look how does fire get into structures. I think when I started fire service, we're very concerned with direct. So we're looking at how you keep vegetation away from the structure.

We started looking at 30 foot clearances, 100 foot clearances to keep your trees from carrying fire directly into your house. The other thing we started looking at was ember cast. So what right next to your structure is gonna be a receptive fuel vent for ember cast, which if you look in the Palisade videos, and I know we all have, the landscaping fuel that we saw in the wildfire allows the fire to skip over any vegetation management you might have done and land right into your front porch and maybe catch your fence on fire and then catch your attic on fire and then it's off to the races. The really scary thing that's contributing to these more recent fires, specifically what we saw in Hawaii, what we've seen in Palisade, Eaton, Paradise, is the structure to structure component. So once one of fire gets going inside a structure, we would typically send three engine companies, two truck companies to dedicate to that one structure to keep the surrounding three structures, both sides in the back from catching on fire.

Because if you don't, they will. You just don't have enough resources when you have several 100 houses burning to put five units per per house to keep that from happening. Once structure structure happens, it overwhelms the system, and you get this community configuration, which we are witnessing. A lot of questions that they're getting down south is what resources were available, where we're putting them. Just put for perspective, LA County has 29 departments.

There's 200 stations down there, and they have 9,000 sworn staff. They also, OES preposition, believe it was 65 engines and Cal Fire preposition another 45, so another 110 engines. There also was seven water tenders, seven extra helicopters, their fleet. I think they already have 15 helicopters in the Alma County area, and they staged another 10 or nine bulldozers to the 10 that they have ready to go normally every day. They see a lot of fire down there.

They're pretty good at it, and they have a lot of resources. You could always ask the question where do you put them. The problem with Santa Ana winds, it's a regional event. We know today exactly where both those fires started. Prior to that event, you don't know where to put them. And if you pull everything from San Diego to put it to LA, you're putting San Diego to this. The other thing that came up is the municipal municipal water supply. It I think it's worth pointing out that fire started in the morning. They fought that fire for about, you know, till three in the morning. At that point, there was a percentage of the upper elevations of Palisades where they did lose water pressure.

Part of that, it's a system to renewable tanks. It's not as big or as robust of the systems that they we have here in Hayward, but any system has weaknesses. And you start checking off parts of that system, and you're gonna see decreases in pressure. They had one large tank that was out of service for maintenance, which happens in every water service at some point. With that, how the fire source operates, we go to a lot of places throughout the state that have much worse water systems than we have here. You adapt and revise. You overcome. You order water tenders, you figure out systems to do it. I would say during the middle of this, the priority is gonna be life safety. You're not stopping at that point.

So most of those engines are literally just like law enforcement, getting people out of the way and saving loss of life. Go to the next slide. This is a FEMA index map because it's kinda tying a couple of things together. So Alameda County scores a 99.87 out of a 100 on their risk scale, which puts us number five in the nation, number four in the state. The reasoning behind that is we have two large, you know, two large risks.

And they're evaluating all kinds of risks from tsunami, coastal flooding. The two that really kick up our number is gonna be earthquake with the fall going right through us. It's their number one risk fall in the nation as ours because it's way overdue, and it stretches from Belaya to San Jose and A lot of people live right on top of it. And we also carry the wildland risk. With that, just being aware of our county, the majority of the high or very high hazard is, your tunnel fire areas, so Berkeley, and the Oakland Hills.

Our hills tend to be a little one category less, which is a high fire risk. Still a fire risk, not quite as bad as what we see at Elkton Brook. So with that, going with what we're seeing today is suppression alone isn't necessarily winning the battle just based on what we're seeing statistically. I think what we're seeing in the regional product projects for vegetation management and the defensible space initiatives. And I think over the next couple of years, you're gonna hear me say a lot about zone zero, which is zone zero is the five feet around your house.

Studies show that the best way to minimize that configuration or that house to house is to have nothing combustible within five feet. The challenge with that is I'm not immune to this too as a homeowner. I like my wood fences. I like my decorative trees. However, what you're seeing is that's a receptive fuel bed, and it's not an individual problem if you choose that. If my house catches on fire, my neighbor's house is. This is a community problem that requires a community solution. The other thing that's really come a long way is the evacuation policies and the and the systems that are out there now. AC alert, I can't stress enough. People should register for AC alert.

Genesis Protect allows you to go on and get updates as far as where the evacuation zones are. Watch duty, I would I'm in California. I would put it on your phone. It syncs a lot of these things together. And right now, you can see lifetime updates of what's going on with the fires that are in

your area across the state.

Genesis Protect is actually put on there. You can see evacuation zones, places to go, where to take your pets, stuff like that. And it's really they've have been we've all fire service, we've looking at it the last couple of years, Pretty good app to know what's going on. And the other thing I would say is everybody should go look at the Ready, Set, Go, Cal Fire requirements is evacuations are a real thing. There are people evacuating our state right now. I think the majority of the communities across the state are not ready yet. So that's my end report. I could talk about the quicks and wildlife fire all day, but I know none of us wants to be here until two

in the morning.

Oh, there's me. There's Mary.

Hi, Mary. Think it must be that Brian left. I'm I'm Yes. I will log on.

I just can I add a couple of things for you? We've been pushing really hard for the community to sign up for AC alert. Anytime you feel inclined to let somebody in the community know that they really should sign up for AC alert, like, today, it would help us out because it is an opt in system. So that means that when we put out an AC alert, the only people who are getting it are the people who proactively picked up their phone and Yeah. And put in

for it. And I know who they are.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. And that doesn't mean that we cannot that there's not a system for us to use, You know? But this is just we'll add some redundancy, and AC alert will be very fast for us to do.

If we need to do a larger group and make sure that we hit everybody, one of the things that we will be doing at the same time For instance, if chief Henry is doing an AC alert and getting that put out, I could be calling our county representatives in the EOC and start activating an iPause type of alert, and that's the kind of alert where it pings everybody's cell phone within the the designated area that we provide. So both those things will be going on, but just the the AC alert helps us for some more localized events, and it will also help in the bigger events too. So I wanna put that out there. And our water department is great. Like, Henry said, we've got one of the best water department systems around that I've seen when you've talked to other firefighters.

And when we go through our annual insurance service organization's rates, they're always at, like, thirty nine thirty nine point five out of 40 points possible. So I I have no question that the water department our water system is gonna be doing what it's designed to do. But when we have, you know, five, six or more fires going at the same time, no water system is gonna be

In three different neighborhoods or five Yeah. They're they're not gonna be able to keep up.

You know? It just it it is what it is. Physics comes comes into play at some point. And so, anyway, those are just a couple of things that I wanted to to bring up because I know there were questions after the the fire going on.

Any and even today, isn't and I forget I forget if I know this or not, but isn't there, like, two points of entry of the city where with the the water lines actually come in to the city? Mhmm. Right? Is it along Mission Boulevard? I don't know if that's even is it public? But there there are two points of entry for the water lines into the city. Right?

Yeah. There's a tie in between the East Baymont system and the Alameda County Water District system. So we have the ability to if we needed to, if we ask it's just what the systems concept were tied in multiple different ways.

Yeah. Thanks. You know, so maybe it is a good time for us to have we are we doing them, like, PSAs on this, like, so that we could all share, you know, on, you know, on AC alert, but also on defensible space management? You know? I mean, it it's obviously for fun in everyone's mind watching this. Might be a good time to put something like that out to remind people because, you know, people are thinking about their go bags and, you know, especially the hills and, their you know, what they should be doing.

We've done a bunch. Just last year, we did a a site demonstration site where we picked the location, got grant money, and we did a large project to show, a, it made it fire safe for for the neighbors and the residents in the area. And b, I'm embarrassed to say, but I made some videos with the help of both our if you wanna tune in, we've got a series of three videos where I walk us through the whole process. This is what, you know, the site looked like ahead of time. This is what we're gonna try to accomplish.

I went back out halfway through and said this is the progress we've made and then did a final one where we said this is what it should look like in the end. We definitely are going to be doing working with our PIO, Chuck's team Mhmm. To do some really, like, detailed work on describing Zone 0 and home hardening. We get a lot of calls from people talking about fuel management, and we're going to be upping our game in that, looking at ways that we can improve. It's very labor intensive.

It's very difficult in some places due to, steep terrain, you know, that kind of stuff. So we have to be really strategic, and it's it's gonna take time to to get through this. But we're gonna start looking at all of our threats, kind of rating, which is the most hazardous and and how we approach that. Right?

Yeah. But, mean, I, like, I think, like, everyone's watching it. I'm I mean, you know, if I go past a video, I'll look, oh, 10 ways to make sure your home is fire first. Like, I feel like we should be putting that out of the city because people are watching. They're looking for anything. Like, oh, okay. You know, I read something in the case of a fire you know, leave your house, leave your lights on. I'm like, oh, that's a tip I've never heard of because then the fire department can see your house with all the smoke going on, you know, all those things. So I I just think right now and, you know, we are people are watching the fire department space because, you know, you did put out that video about what was happening in LA. And, you know, you have a captive audience right now.

I think it's time to we you know, even if it's just taking, you know, public service announcements that you did last year and just reopening them right now because people are it's top of mind. And I think, you know, it'd be good without doing any new work. Just what is a defense what is a defensible space? And, you know, and don't forget to sign up for AC alert. You know, I think that would be a good time right now even if it came from the stack. And and same thing for all of us. I mean, I think if we all were sent a graphic that we could just post right now, I I think we would all repost AC alert and make sure we're getting the word out as well. So yeah.

But, yeah, the chief was sitting the meeting with our RPIO, and our strategy was we're gonna talk about what we're doing, followed up with a series on evacuations. So AC alert Yep. Or your zone, register all that. Yeah. And then followed by another one on. Great. And then also I'm sorry. The zone zero and how to prepare your home. Normally, that's something we put out in the spring, but we do recognize, like you're saying, it's a captive audience right now. Yeah. People are like, what can I do? Now is the time we're trying to.

Yeah. I mean, like, my parent friends and I were all sharing this information. Mean, people are interested. What can I do? Then there was that one story about, I think it was in the Chronicle about the man who saved his house because he got a water pump for his pool, and he had some fire retardant stuff. And, you know, we were all passing that around. Like, okay. What could we do locally? So, yeah, I think Captivitans do it now as quickly as possible. I think it's a really good time. Then let's see. I think I I was gonna ask. What about goats? Like, you know, you were saying some of this training is really difficult. It seems like you know, and you do see goats on the home. And is that something that we do, or is that a private

That's something that we have done. There's one location that we've done it three years in the Prominence behind the Prominence neighborhood. Mhmm. Hayward owns a lot of land right up against their properties there. And so we have put goats in there three years.

This year, we did not because the recommended practice is to not to go for three years, give the give the land a little bit of time to rehab a little bit, and then we can start up the process again. So that's something we'll have to either ask for a budget from the fire department or landscape. Right? So in in years past, we've kinda traded off, but mostly that's gonna be coming from, the landscape division's budget, but we're happy to work with them. They work well with us, and that we've we've talked about these things for a long time. So

What about, is StoneFerry their own HOA up there? What do they do to participate in, in that kind of management, fire suppression, defensible spaces?

I don't know if they they there's some communities have their own, like, organizations and things they do, like Prominence does, and we're gonna try

and work Is that Bailey up near Bailey Ranch? Is that, like, they did they did

So call Okay.

Mhmm. I don't know much about what they do up in the in that community. That's something that we could take a look at. I do know that every year we go out, we do drive by inspections of each lot with our crews, and then they will cite or, you know, notifications on a program that we have. And then if there are violations that are written down, we will notice them and then ask them to abate. K.

Just to sort of build on that, you know how, like, schools have emergency plans or you know? I mean, do we do we have, like, a do we hold HOAs accountable to have a or do we require them to have a an emergency plan? No?

No. There's nothing that I'm aware of that. But, again, that's something that looking forward, if we can, like, lobby for those homes and encourage them those homeowner groups to become California fire safe communities. There are benefits that they can have working together to make their communities safe. And I will say that one of the that's one of the most important things that people can do is to harden their homes.

That includes by doing things like defensible space, incorporating zone zero, going in and making sure that they have the mesh on their screens for all their vents and all that stuff is is small enough that you can't poke like a golf tee through it. Right? You have to the more fine mesh you have on there, the less chance of an Amber getting through. Right? So those are all things that you can do. And one of the things that that I like to pass along because it is so, just visually impactful.

And then if

you look it up in the right way, there are stories that have been done on it. The, fire in Maui, the if you look up the red roof house in Maui, it's an aerial shot of a totally devastated landscape with one house that has, I believe, stucco siding, a metal red roof. And you look around, if you zoom in, they've got a three foot border of gravel around the home. There's no plant vegetation, anything like that. It was a happy accident in that case because the homeowner was doing it to keep termites out of the house, but it is a prime example of exactly how Zone 0 is supposed to look.

And you can find articles that talk about why it survived and and how people can do that. And it's just a testament to what individual homeowners can do to try and protect their home. Yeah.

Okay. I know I I feel a little obsessed by it. I'm reading all the articles looking at it.

And to continue with your obsession, I wanna add, thank you, chief Palmer. We also sent a informational email to the mayor and to the city council earlier today that has some talking points. Mhmm. When people start asking you about our the city's readiness to to to combat the fires similar to what happened in LA Mhmm. Or wildfires. So that's also available to you as a tool. Mhmm. Great. Thank you.

Mhmm. Great. Okay. Is that it? Is that it? Okay. Okay. I will move on to the next item, which is future agenda items. And so the next meeting's in March?

Yeah. It's there.

Pardon. Thank you.

Okay. I'm glad about the updated one. I mean, I suppose we should add at this point update on what, you know, what, some energy talked about an update on your response to a potential ICE race. If we should add that to The

March March 26.

I mean, there's only two things in March. Yeah. So and it doesn't have to be a really long thing, but what was the outcome of these discussions? Is that okay?

You're good

with that? Mhmm. And now I can look at

And then that's on top of the ongoing, fire chief report, police chief report.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. There is no other business on there. Move on to proposed 2025 agenda planning calendar review and comment. That's what we just did. That's what we just did. Looks good. Hold on. Yeah.

It's a resolution on if we will hold the July meeting. Oh, that's right. We didn't

July? Are we August is when we're off. Right?

Yeah. And it would be what when is the date now? So it'd be, like, you guys said third week?

What's the So it's is

it during the the third or fourth? Fourth. Fourth. Would be July 23. So that's

We can try it. So it's, like, a week before August. Unless

That's a good question. Question. Should we do it given that we might do it right before the break? Or can we keep it to be determined until the May meeting, or do you guys need to plan? Well, I guess you need to plan schedules. Right?

Okay. So why don't we just cancel that? Let's just let's Okay. Let's not have the meeting.

I'm I'm done with that.

Unless something Yeah. I think July is fine. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah.

Moving on to, council member or staff announcements and referrals. Anything? Nope. Seeing none, ladies and gentlemen. You enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

These meetings are know, they go longer than I think because it's so interesting.